Spanish Translation Test

If you are reading this then please pray for me. Tomorrow I have another wicket to go through in the pursuit of my PhD. The Saint Louis University American Studies department has a foreign language requirement for the PhD program. Tomorrow I will be taking a Spanish language translation test to prove that I can do academic research in another language. I took 5 years of Spanish in Junior High and High School, and have taken several trips to Mexico and Spain, but haven't spoken much Spanish in the last 15 years. So, it will be touch and go on the translation test. I pray that my trusty Spanish dictionary gets me through. To get me prepared for the test I have been translating the Book of Romans. It brings a lot of meaning to what the Bible says when you read it in another language and then have to go through the work of translating each word into English. It is an enlightening project that I enjoy and brings a deeper level of understanding to what we read and take for granted each day. I may push ahead and complete translating the book of Romans just for the understanding it will help me gain.

Hockey, Thugs on Skates

Lets see how many people I can get upset with the title to this post. I enjoy watching hockey because I think the players are amazing athletes. But I hate the violence. Sometimes I think the game should have an "R" rating. What happened the other night in Vancouver will hopefully make the NHL understand that the game has gotten out of control. I grew up in Los Angeles where hockey is just the sport between the Lakers and the Dodgers, so I was never much of a hockey fan growing up. Living in St Louis now I have become more of a hockey fan, but still have never been to a NHL game. I don't want to get blood stains on my clothes. I will continue to boycott hockey games until the game is cleaned up and the athletes, not the bruisers, rule the game.

Passionate, But Not About Mel's Movie!

Interesting article in Christiaity Today on The Passion of the Christ by Brian McLaren. Jordon Cooper had a link to this article and it was pretty good. The article is located here. In some ways I agree with Brian that we tend to look for outreach gimmicks, but in other ways I think these are opportunities to reach unbelievers. There is one positive aspect that we can't refute about The Passion of the Christ, it has people reflecting on their relationship with the Lord.

A Full Wekend

We had a really full weekend the last couple of days. Saturday Bethany competed at the district band solo competition and received a 1st. Both Bethany and Matthew did a great job over the last two weeks of performing when the pressure is on. They both received 1sts and made us proud.

Saturday afternoon Bethany had a Basketball game. You can see pictures on the family fotopage linked off to the right. She did great there.

After the game we went downtown St Louis to look at the St Louis Walk of Fame. We went down there to get Matthew some extra credit points for Black History Month. We walked the Walk of Fame, took some pictures, and later did some research on the African Americans who have start there. We were impressed. We took a picture of the Dred and Harriet Scott Star. It is amazing to think the impact the Dred Scott case had on all of the US, and it started in the St Louis Old Courthouse.

When we were all done we ate dinner at Fitz's Rootbeer Bottling Company. What a great restaurant! They had wonderful food and the best rootbeer I have ever tasted. The floats were wonderful also.

Sunday we went to Morning worship, Sunday School, and Evening worship. We were pretty tired by the time 9:00 rolled around, so we all went to bed early. It was a fun and busy weekend. They are getting to be the norm.

A Great Bible Reading Day Today

If you follow the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan like I do then you will note that today's reading is a wonderful selection of chapters. Today is highlighted by Romans 3 and Psalm 51. I don't know of two chapters in the Bible that have made a bigger difference in my life than these two.

Romans 3 Summary: We are all sinners, Jews and Greeks alike. There is none righteous, no one. No one can be justified by works, because God is perfect and we cannot meet his expectation for holiness (perfection). But, through our faith we have been justified (made just as if I'd never sinned) through Jesus Christ because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Christ's saving grace is a gift from God and not something we can earn on our own.

Psalm 51 Summary: This Psalm was written after David had taken Bathsheba and had relations with her. She became pregnant and David had her husband Uriah murdered on the battlefield. Psalm 51 says, Be gracious to me, O God. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know what I have done and it has separated me from my relationship with You. I am a sinner from birth and will continue to be one until the day I go to be with You. But, You desire what is in a person's heart and now what a person does. Create in me a clean heart O God, and renew my spirit. Please give me more of Your Holy Spirit and restore to me the joy of my salvation. Then I can be more effective in my ability to lead others to You. What You really want is a broken spirit and a repentant heart.

These two chapters tell us that we are not alone. We are all sinners, but for some reason that I don't fully understand, God sent Christ to earth to restore our relationship with Him. Jesus was that sacrifice that God took on our behalf. It all comes back to God's wrath being taken out on Christ instead of us. If you have seen The Passion of the Christ, If you are a believer in Christ, you probably have some idea what God's wrath looks like. But as graphic and brutal as some of the scenes in the movie are it can never depict the incredible pain and agony that Christ suffered for both you and I. It wasn't a movie. It wasn't some actor portraying pain, it was the wrath of the Creator of the Universe being poured out on His Son, all for us. It was so bad that before Christ was taken he was sweating blood (Luke 22:44)and have received Him as your personal Lord and Savior then God sees you as justified (pure, innocent, and clean) and can let you enter his presence any time.

Anyhow, it was a great Bible reading day today. Good luck and God be with you.

Band Solo Competitions

Matthew had a band solo competition last Saturday. He was awarded a 1st! He did a great job. He has been playing the French Horn for about 2 years now and continues to get better and better. He is turning into a wonderful musician. After Easter he wants to start playing at the church orchestra, which I think is a great idea.

Bethany has a band solo competition on this coming Saturday. She will be playing the flute. She has only been playing for around 8 months and is doing wonderfully also. My kids are so much more talented than I am. Praise God!

Monday Night Outreach

We had a great outreach night last night. I had an opportunity to pray along with 3 other men for those people who might be visiting our church in the near future. We also prayed for those who had recently visited. We are not doing a very good job of taking advantage of the opportunities that God places before us in witnessing, sharing with others, and simply being good hosts and hostesses for the Lord. When someone visits FBC O'Fallon or the College Church we need to follow up and make contact with that person. Not because we are concerned about the growth of our church, but because the Lord has provided us with this opportunity to talk about Him to someone we have only lknown for a short while. This might be the only opportunity that person will have to hear about Jesus, and our only opportunity to share Christ with that person, and for us not to share is pure selfishness.

The other thing we prayed for was that the Lord will raise up teachers in the church who will pasionately serve Him. We need to have committed leaders who intimately know the Lord who are willing to share their faith with others.

Lord help me to do a better job of presenting you to others.

Dissertation Proposal at Saint Louis University: Done!!!

Well, yesterday was one of those days I don't care to relive. At 10:00 I had to present my Dissertation Proposal to the students and faculty of the Saint Louis University Department of American Studies. I knew my Dissertation Topic was too broad. I called my topic A Consuming View: The Northern California Cultural Landscape As Viewed Through Literature 1845-2000. I knew that it was too broad, but I had hoped that by limiting my research to how literature describes the landscape would focus the topic more. I guess I didn't fool anyone. The faculty caught right on and wants me to focus on a smaller time period. The periods I think that are the most interesting are the Gold Rush (1849-1860), the turn of the century (1900-1910), the Dustbowl years (1930-1940), the turbulent 1960s, or the Dotcom Boom of the (1990-2000). I will probably decide between a focus on the 1930s and analyze Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle, which is probably an overdone time period, or concentrate on the turn of the century and analyze Frank Norris' The Octopus. The turn of the century hasn't been researched nearly as much and is probably a little bit more of an open field, but doesn't have quite as much color and glamour as the 1930s. Either way I have my work cut out for me over the next year.

The SLU faculty, unbelievably, approved my Dissertation Proposal with some modifications (narrowing the focus) and thinks my subject is worthwhile and will bring new knowledge to light. One of the questions that puzzled me a little though is the one that went like this, "When most people study landscape they study physical landscape, why do you want to study landscapes created in an author's mind?" Well, research is supposed to be original! No one is doing research on mentally created landscapes (what I call cognitive landscape). Maybe it is because it is too hard, but it is sure a wide open field.

Anyhow, we'll see how this all pans out. I still have to complete the language requirement (I'll be taking a Spanish translation test next month) and finish the Dissertation. Then it will be Doc Rick!

It was a really cold and windy, but beautiful day at SLU, so I took some pictures of campus and put them in our family fotopage here.

After presenting my Dissertation Proposal I hopped back to work to finish out the day. Last night we had two events going on at The College Church at the Gate. The David Crowder Band (David Crowder is an awesome praise and worship leader from Waco, Texas) was playing in Lincoln, Illinois and most of our church went up there for the concert. I stayed behind incase anyone showed up that didn't go to the concert. No one came, so I went home and turned in early. It was a long, but productive day! Thank you Lord.

Great Impact Worship Last Sunday Night

Bob and Liz Ridlon came and shared with us last Sunday evening and did a wonderful job explaining the basic concepts of intelligent design. They used mathematical formulae to show us how macro-evolution (evolution between species) was statistically impossible, shared how there is absolutely no scientific evidence for macro-evolution, and shared how the evidences that evolutionists use to prove their theories are actually better suited to prove creation than evolution.

This has been an amazing week with collegiate evangelist and apologist Phil Nelson coming last Wednesday and the Ridlons sharing their creation research last Sunday. I will try to schedule them again for the fall, right after the start of the school year to follow up and help provide us a firm foundation for evangelism and apologetics. They go hand in hand. If we can know how to back up what we believe I feel we will can more effectively share Christ with others.

Take care and God bless you all.

Great Bible Study Last Night

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

Wow! Phil Nelson really laid it on us last night. The only reason we were created was to worship the Lord and to tell the good news of the gospel. I saw a lot of light bulbs going on while Phil was talking. He is absolutely right. The Lord provides us with so many opportunities each day to plant seeds and begin talking about Him. And, if we don't have a strategy we will miss most of them. Our responsibility is to have our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts open, on, and ready to respond to the opportunities that God leads our way. I waste so many opportunities each day that I am embarrassed to think about it. The Holy Spirit, through Phil, convicted me last night to be consciously seeking out those opportunities that God provides to share the good news of Jesus.

Here is the web link to Phil's Collegiate Conversations Yahoo Group. It is a growing group and is dedicated to collegiate evangelism and Christian aplogetics (being able to back up what you believe through scripture). I have also placed a link to Phil's Yahoo Group off on the column to the right. We have a Yahoo group for the College Church. The link is here and also off to the right. In order to use a Yahoo group you will have to join the group. It is free, and you can join even if you don't have a Yahoo E-Mail account. It is a siimple process to join and well worth the effort.

Thanks for another awesome night. The Holy Spirit was ministering to many of us. I appreciate each and every one of you coming and being a part of our group.

Your brother in Christ,

Rick